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LA Times Examines Silicon Valley
Richard Finney writes "The Los Angeles Times has a special section on Silicon Valley. Most of the stories focus on the 'survivors struggling through the toughest stretch in tech industry history.' There's also a story on
Five Reasons to Hope -
New technologies that may help Silicon Valley rise again: Biotech, microsensors, nanotechnology, flexible electronics and data mining. We'll see."
There's way too many IT people nowadays & it's spoiling it for everybody.
I take it by that you mean theres to many early twentish males who lernt html from magazines and think there gods gift to the net, then bullshite there cv to get a job, get fired soon after and relise there actualy not that good, then either decide to do advertising instead or try harder
I know this is how it works here in Manchester(UK).
moo
My cynical predictions:
1) Bush continues buildup.
2) Bush does quick + fairly clean war. A few Americans die. Iraq is offically 'cleaned up'.
3) Bush rises in polls. The (US, short-term) economy recovers on the positive effects of the war. (Long term world economy predictions are nebulous.)
4) Bush is voted to another term.
5) Midway through next term, Bush proposes war against another country.
6) World condems attack. World pressures said country into capitulation.
7) Bush goes with world opinion and is praised for peaceful solution to problem.
8) Bush exists office, hailed as great leader in both times of war and peace.
9) Everybody else is pissed.
-Brett
Come on, that's hardly fair. There are all kinds of people who worked in the dot-coms at some point (and no, I am not one such). I would understand your comment if you meant people who only worked in dot-coms, but even that's not fair for people who got their bachelor's 3-5 years ago. What were they supposed to do when dot-coms were more than half of programming job market?
Interview them, give them a chance to tell you what they actually did. Many of them actually worked for successful (*gasp*) dot-coms. Many were lowly entry-level employees who did what they were told and produced quality work within those constraints.
And as for CTOs of failed dot-coms, well those resumes you can probably safely through into trash. They deserve to be judged by the quality of their work.
I would agree with you...but you are only half right. I was in the middle of everything from before the boom, and still in it.
I know a hell of a lot of engineers that worked their asses off during the bubble. What I saw more of, however, was a lot of barely-got-my-mba types who wanted to drive their Ferrari's and schmooze and didn't know whack about managing a company, or what a business plan was.
It was this class of individual that ruined the economy, not the engineers. So, I would agree with you that the execs should be put in the circular file, but there are still some solid engineers out there looking desperately for work that do have proven track records marred by the dot.com bubble.
I would be careful of putting yourself on such a high pedistal...are you sure that you didn't profit from the bubble too?
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
I spent a year in the Valley looking for work... unsuccessfully. I'm now back in Australia and will try again in a few years. Jobs in the Valley are very much Cutting Edge Tech jobs, and i think it's very difficult to get into them unless you have recent experience working with them. (I'm talking software here - there are plenty of Verilog/VHDL/FPGA/etc jobs.) The software jobs almost all demand recent and extensive experience in J2EE/.NET/etc. The only jobs i ended up getting interviews for while i was staying there were in Fresno (central California/redneck zone) and in and around LA... and they were your average Linux/UNIX/C/VMS/etc jobs - exactly the stuff i am skilled and experienced in.
I think the Valley is trying too hard to be "cool" and ahead of the curve, at the expense of seeing that innovation can happen in other areas. Linux is a perfect example of something that is based on OLD technology and paradigms, but is still doing pretty cool stuff. Hell, even Windows app development is relatively old tech and "traditional" software paradigms, but there is a lot of flexibility available and a lot of Windows apps are far from "uncool". I don't know if we can blame this on the Dot Com boom... but it's frustrating that most developers who have honed their skills in other countries or even other states - or even OTHER CITIES IN THE SAME STATE can't find work because they weren't working with "hip" technology. It seems like Apple is about the only place in the Valley still doing interesting stuff with software. Hell, most of the game development houses are in LA, Microsoft is mostly in Seattle, Amazon is too... Linux development is distributed across the whole world, and IBM closed down its San Jose operations... All we can hope is that a few REAL visionaries end up in charge of companies there soon and start hiring people who have real-life skills rather than just a collection of certifications and J2EEE/.N3T/L33TPROGRAMMER!@23$ acronyms in their resumes.
let me corect a little history:
the depression was a result of a few things that date back to WWI. in th teens, with europe at war and no end in sight, wilson and especially the banks encouraged farmers borrow, borrow, borrow, and grow, grow, grow, since WWI was being fought on french farmlands. well, great idea. except, it takes about 2-3 years for the farmers to realize return and so by 1917, US enters the war, and within a year, it is over. (great move wooodrow. sorry, my $.02) so...farmers go bust. banks begin to feel the heat. large migration into the cities, where farmers are now competing with immigrants which drives down wages, etc. industry is doing well, but like today, it was built upon a bubble. so about late 20's, it begins to slip. germany can no longer pay its reparations to france and britain, who can no longer repay their loans to US banks. we decide to pass hawley-smoot tariff, and close off foreign trade. which causes huge banking losses. so...
the stock market was built on a bubble, like today. the collateral for a stock was the stock itself, and the holders had margins of like 10%. so, when the banks called their loans, and the stock was almost valueless, the banks began to fold. as banks began to fold, the stocks nosdived. and thus, october 29, the crash. (which btw, was not as big as the 1987 crash). since the economy was mostly cash based, the banks were way short cash, thus they close. now the good part...
the fed chairman, ben strong, was a student of marshallian economics. big time monetarist. so, there's a formula called the quantity theory of money, or MV=PQ.
#include <econ101.h>
basically, the quantity of money is supposed to be some proportion of the GDP. as GDP fell, ben strong "rightly" shrunk the money supply. then GDP fell, then strong shrunk money, etc., etc., etc. by 1932, the quantity of money was 2/3 of what it had been in 1929. thus, the severity of the depression. that is why some republicans, like jack kemp, have deep seated fears and distrust of the fed. also some democrats, since both see the power over the economy money has. long enough lecture.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
What will bring the next windfall will be a synergetic grouping of cost effective methods or products, with multiple applications, each resulting from a different source (corporation, university dept, etc.) It most likely won't be nanotech or biotech, considering the cost of development. I do know that it will seem obvious in hindsight.
Again I just wanted to clarify: The "windfall" in technology was never a windfall at all (technology has been making the steady march forward for a couple of decades now), but rather was a classic investor's pyramid scheme -- It could have easily have been marbles or George Foreman Grills that got the markets fired up and we'd have the "Grill Heavy Nasdaq Composite". As far as hindsight, there were many people clanging the bells of doom for the ridiculous overvaluations back in 1998, but to many investors they were just trying to rain on their parade so they were ignored.
Tech spending is basically the gross sales of the major technology companies: It has actually been edging UPWARDS year over year. Never confuse the stock markets with reality, because they often are quite disassociated.
I dont think so.
One thing that has always set this country apart from others, is that when we needed an idea; be it war, or a new gadget that spawned an industry; we got one. I believe that will happen again. No one in America should doubt that we will return from the brink once again.
Debt itself is NOT a bad thing, there is good debt and bad dept. Bad debt is what most Americans have because they cant stand not having the biggest SUV on the block, whether they can afford it or not. Sooner or later, someone (or some hundreds of folks) will go into debt to finance a good idea, which will bring us right back into solvency.
I am doing all I can to stay in debt, buying up all the cheap real-estate I can find, and renting it out at confiscatory prices. Good economy or bad, people will always need a place to live. Buy and Hold is not a bad idea; it just depends on what you are buying and holding.